'LIGHT' Photography by Tom Elkins

About

'Light' is an ongoing collection of photographic projects which use projected light to create unique depictions of the human form. The photographs in each of the projects challenge notions about identity: the subjects are anonymous, often little more than a series of abstract lines, but they reveal details which emerge in the darkness; skin texture, hair, tattoos, the glint of projected light reflected in an eye, all hinting at the individual hidden in the abstract.

There are five projects so far which comprise the wider 'Light' series:

'Contours' - a series using symmetrical grids and lines to render the topography of the human form

'Tears' - a collaborative approach where participants create the patterns which are subsequently projected onto them

'Single Line Portraits' - profile images photographed with a single line projected onto the subject

'Muybridge' - a reinterpretation of Eadweard Muybridge's 'Human Figure in Motion' which inverts his work by projecting grids onto moving subjects undertaking a variety of tasks.

'Fingerprints' - portraits taken using the subject's own fingerprint as the basis of the projected light.​

Tom Elkins is a London-based photographer from the UK. His work alternates between issue-specific photography and abstract artistic projects. A Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and CEO of award-winning participatory photography charity PhotoVoice. Recently, an image from his work in Chernobyl was included in the first Magnum Photography Print Swap, and images from his 'Light' series have been exhibited in a variety of locations in London, Budapest and in printed publications such as fLIP and Uncertain States.​

Selections from each of these projects will be on display at the Ply Gallery from 2nd - 7th October. There will be additional interactive elements which will display the works in different formats, including stereograms, anaglyphs, praxinoscopes and zoetropes, as well as newly created short films showing different approaches to the work.

Works will be available to purchase.

On Sunday 7th October a salon session will be available for people to book, which will give people the opportunity to have their own single line portrait taken. Bookings for this can be made via www.threepractices.com